Browning 

Memc 



4^3 6 



BROWNING MEMORIAL. 



Has not this man then a right to my love, to my admiration, 
to all the means which I can employ in his defence ? . . . A 
poet is formed by the hand of Nature ; he is aroused by mental 
vigor, and inspired by what we may call the spirit of divinity 
itself Therefore our Ennius has a right to give to poets the 
epithet of Holy, because they are, as it were, lent to mankind 
by the indulgent bounty of the gods. 

Cicero : Oration for Archias. 




ROBERT BROWNING. 



3?tt Jflemoriam. 



Memorial to Robert Browning 



UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 



BROWNING SOCIETY OF BOSTON. 



King's Chapel, Tuesday, January 28, 1890. 



Caniberwell, England, May 7, 1812. 
Venice, Italy, December 12, i88g. 



Printed for tfje Soctcto 

BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. CAMBRIDGE. 






IUN 22 1911 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Order of Exercises 9 

Introductory ....... n 

Opening Address. By Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson 14 

Song from Robert Browning's "Pippa Passes" 17 

Prayer. By Rev. Francis G. Peabody, D.D 18 

Hymn. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning ....... 20 

Memorial Address. By Rev. Charles Carroll Everett, D.D. 21 

Song from Robert Browning's "Paracelsus" 47 

Personal Reminiscences. By C. P. Cranch 48 

Sonnet. By C P. Cranch 53 

Remarks. By Dana Estes 54 

Poem. By R. W. Gilder 59 

Hymn. By Isaac Watts 6° 

Benediction. By Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D 61 

Committee of Arrangements " 2 

Ushers - . 63 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Portrait of Robert Browning Frontispiece 

King's Chapel n 

Interior King's Chapel 21 

■ King's Chapel, Chancel and Pulpit, with Memorial 

Decorations -54 



The Browning Society is indebted to the New England Magazink 
Company for the use of the Portrait, and the two views of King's Chapel. 



Order of Exercises. 



Organ Prelude . . John Sebastian Bach . . B. J. Lang. 
— * — 

OPENING ADDRESS. 

By the President of the Browning Society of Boston, 

COL. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 



SONG. 

" The year 's at the spring." 

Words from Robert Browning's " Pippa Passes." Music by 
Clara K. Rogers. Sung by W. J . Winch. 

* 

PRAYER. 

BY REV. FRANCIS G. PEABODY, D.D. 



HYMN. 

" He giveth His beloved sleep." 

Words by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Music written for this 
occasion by B. J. Lang. Sung by W. J. Winch. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 

BY REV. CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT, D.D. 



SONG. 

" I go to prove my soul ! " 

From Robert Browning's "Paracelsus." Music by Emily 
Harradan. Sung by W. J. Winch. 

♦ 

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES, AND SONNET WRITTEN 
FOR THE OCCASION. 

BY C. P. CRANCH. 



REMARKS. 

BY DANA ESTES, Chairman of the Executive Committee. 



READING OF TRIBUTES. 

From PROF. CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. From REV. JAMES T. BIXBY. 

From CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. From HON. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

From THOMAS N. HART, Mayor of Boston. 



AN ORIGINAL POEM. 

BY RICHARD WATSON GILDER. 



HYMN. 

Sung by the audience at the Westminster Abbey Service. 
" O God, our help in ages past." 



BENEDICTION. 

BY REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D'. 




KING'S CHAPEL. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



ROBERT BROWNING, by his life and death, as well 
as by his own "rare gold ring of verse," has indis- 
solubly linked together England and Italy. It was befitting 
that he should behold the last of earth at "beautiful Venice, 
the bride of the sea," and that all which is mortal of him 
should rest in the sacred soil of England's historic abbey ; 
but he is the poet, not of England or of Italy, but of 
humanity, — honored and loved the world over, wherever 
the soul struggles or man aspires. 

To initiate some outward expression of that honor and 
love among our own people seemed naturally to devolve 
upon an organized body like the Browning Society of Bos- 
ton. On its behalf the board of officers undertook what 
was at once a privilege and a duty ; others kindly assisted 
in this labor of love, and we here chronicle the result. 

King's Chapel, so fragrant with sacred memories, where 
through the long years successive generations have gladly 
turned from the stir of the street to the hush of devotion, 
was graciously offered for our use; and on the '28th day of 
January, 1890, at the vesper-hour of four, the spacious edi- 
fice was filled to its capacity with those who desired to join 



1 2 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

in this commemorative service. While there may have been 
contributing causes to swell the multitude of those who, 
without tickets of invitation, thronged the approaches to the 
chapel long before the hour, we are glad to believe that it 
was an indication of a popular appreciation of the man and 
his work beyond what has shown itself in organized expres- 
sion or in individual speech. The day was one of winter's 
best, — serene and beautiful to its close, — only cold enough 
to be tonic. 

The aspect of the interior of the chapel was impressive, 
and its whole tone harmonious. As described in one of 
the journals of the day, " the solemn nave and stately apse 
of this old Romanesque structure, its groined arches and 
time-worn carvings, its pictured windows and softened 
light," gave dignity to the scene ; while the Christmas ever- 
greens still remaining, and twining around the pillars, 
wreathing the walls and clambering over busts and mural 
tablets commemorating the great and good who have passed 
into the " vast forever," — these and the laurel-leaves, the 
calla lilies, the white and pink roses, gracefully disposed 
in the chancel, the reading-desk, and the pulpit, lent the 
beauty of the present to mingle with the charm of the 
past. As Browning would have wished, there was nothing 
funereal ; and as we gazed upon the laurel-crowned crayon 
portrait of the great poet, which rested on the easel at the 



Introductory. 1 3 

right of the chancel, one could well imagine his benignant 
satisfaction that there was " nothing here but what was^ 
good and fair." As tersely expressive of his faith in a per- 
sonal immortality, in God, and in His immanence in the 
world as the Perpetual Beauty, these lines from " Christmas 
Eve," wrought in green immortelles, were in front of the 

pulpit : — 

" And I shall behold Thee face to face, 
O God, and in Thy light retrace 
How in all I loved here still wast Thou ! " 

The rich organ tones, under the accomplished touch of 
Mr. Lang, rendered a solemn but triumphant prelude from 
Bach, and then Prof. William J. Rolfe, the first vice- 
president of our Society, rose and said : — 

" Friends of the Browning Society, and you who belong 
to that larger Browning Society in the great fellowship of 
those who love and honor the poet, I am very sorry that 
Colonel Higginson cannot be here to-day, and I know that 
you will all be very sorry ; but you will be relieved to know 
that in taking his place I speak for him and not for myself, 
and he has very kindly written out what he would say to 
you. You will miss his graceful and felicitous utterance, 
and that is no slight loss ; but it cannot, unfortunately, be 
helped. This is what he would say, and say much better 
than I can, if he were here: — 



OPENING ADDRESS. 

By the President of the Browning Society of Boston, 

COL. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 

[Read by Vice-President Dr. W. J. Rolfe.] 

T ~\ 7"E meet to-day to pay our modest tribute of thanks and 
* * love to one of the great teachers of the English-speak- 
ing world. If British readers paid a similar tribute in West- 
minster Abbey to our own Longfellow, it seems not unfitting 
that we should gather beneath this humbler but still venera- 
ble roof, whose very name links us with our kindred beyond 
sea ; and that we should here recognize our debt to one who 
has been a part of our training, has made his thoughts our 
thoughts, and has enlarged our lives to the wide range of his 
rich imagination. He never visited our shores ; but I remem- 
ber to have read in a letter from his gifted wife that they 
counted among their friends in Italy as many Americans as 
English, and a French critic * has expressed the opinion that 
Browning was himself more an American than an English- 

* Selon les meilleurs critiques il y a plus de similitude entre la nature du talent de 
M. Browning et celle des Americains contemporains . . . qu'avec celle de n'importe 
quel poete Anglais. — Larousse: Dictionnaire Universe!. Art. Browtiing. 



Opening Address. 15 

man in temperament. Those of us who look back forty 
years can remember that he had even then, in this region, a 
circle of grateful readers ; and he was praised in print by 
Margaret Fuller, Lowell, and John Weiss at a time when, as 
Lady Pollock has lately testified, he had scarcely an admirer 
in London save the actor Macready. 

It is not needful that we should assume to decide Robert 
Browning's place among the world's poets ; that requires the 
consent of successive ages and different nationalities, and 
we are some centuries too soon to count the ballots. Five 
hundred years after Dante's birth Voltaire wrote thus of him : 
" The Italians call him divine, but it is a hidden divinity ; 
few people understand his oracles. He has commentators, 
which perhaps is another reason for his not being understood. 
His fame will go on increasing, because scarce anybody 
reads him." * Voltaire wrote thus of Dante, in words which, 
if their source were left unexplained, might well pass as 
having been used of Robert Browning by some dissatisfied 
critic of to-day ; yet Voltaire's was the keenest intellect of 
his age, he stood for what seemed the prevailing sentiment, 
and in spite of him Dante has passed to a final seat among 

* Les Italiens l'appellent divin, mais c'est une divinite cached : peu de gens entendent 
ses oracles ; il a des commentateurs, c'est peut-etre encore une raison de plus pour n'etre 
pas compris. Sa reputation s'affirmira toujours, parcequ'on ne le lit guere. — Voltaire : 
Dictionnaire Philosofihiqiie. Art. Dante. 



1 6 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

the highest kings of song. Fortunately it is not needful 
that we should thus weigh our benefactors in a balance. We 
know that the public and private life of Robert Browning, 
the vast range of his thought and observation, the world 
of characters to whom he has introduced us, the poetic 
dignity and sweetness of his marriage, — that all these things 
not merely secure our affection, but guarantee his fame. 

To say that his work is unequal is to say that he is 
human. Every poet's work is unequal; but in judging of 
the value of a mine we do not measure the dross, we test 
the ore. He who has made life richer and ampler, youth 
more beautiful, age more venerable and hopeful, has been 
the friend of mankind. He passes away from us, but he 
has peopled the realm of imagination with beings who will 
not depart. Paracelsus and Pippa, Colombe and Luria, 
Herve Riel and Andrea del Sarto and Rabbi Ben Ezra, — 
as Macready said of the personages in "The Merchant 
of Venice," "Who is alive, if they are not?" 



Song from Robert Browning's "Pippa Passes." 17 



SONG. 

The year 's at the spring, 
And day 's at the morn : 
Morning 's at seven • 
The hillside 's dew-pearled : 
The lark 's on the wing ; 
The snail 's on the thorn ; 
God 's in his heaven — 
All 's right with the world ! 

Words from Robert Browning's "Pippa Passes." Music by 
Clara K. Rogers. Sung by W. J. Winch. 



PRAYER. 

BY REV. FRANCIS G. PEABODY, D.D. 

ALMIGHTY GOD, with whom do live the spirits of those 
who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls 
of the faithful, after being delivered from the burdens of the 
flesh, are in joy and felicity, we give Thee hearty thanks for 
the good examples of all those thy servants, who, having 
finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labors ; 
and we beseech Thee that we, with all those who are departed 
in the true faith of Thy holy name, may have our perfect con- 
summation and bliss in Thy heavenly and everlasting glory, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Almighty God, we turn ourselves to-day from the busy life 
of the absorbing outward world, desiring to find in this place 
of prayer the quiet contemplation of the inward world of 
imagination and of thought. We thank Thee for the gift 
to this modern time of the insight of the poet and seer. 
We thank Thee that on the wings of song we are lifted out 
of the stress and dust of life to the calm, clear heights of 
emotion, exaltation, and desire. We thank Thee that thus the 
world loses for a time its hold on us, and we look down on 
the perplexing motives and aims of life, and up to the un- 



Prayer. 1 9 

changing skies of love and peace which overarch them all. 
Grant to us this revelation of Thyself which is given to the 
open mind of man. Speak to us by Thy prophets of the 
soul, and bring Thy message down from age to age. Make 
the ideals of our life real to us. May the young among us 
see their visions, and the old among us not outgrow their 
dreams. Let us be led by those who interpret to us the higher 
life of man. Justify to us in these days the poet's work. Re- 
produce in us the impulses to which he. summons us. The 
more we discover in our lives that the things which are seen 
are temporal, so much the more may we find our joy and peace 
in the unseen and the eternal treasures of thought, of vision, 
and of beauty. Grant to us, then, by the message of this 
hour, this permanent enrichment of our spiritual lives. We 
ask it in the spirit of Him who has taught us that Thou, the 
All-Great, art the All- Loving too. In that confession of Thy 
greatness and of Thy love, make us His disciples, and make 
our common prayer to-day His prayer for us. 

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread ; and forgive us 
our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. 
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 
forever and ever. Amen. 



20 Memorial to Robert Browning 



HYMN. 

What would we give to our beloved ? 
The hero's heart to be unmoved, 

The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep, 
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse, 
The monarch's crown to light the brows? 

He giveth His beloved sleep. 

O earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
O men, with wailing in your voices ! 

O delved gold the wailers heap ! 
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God strikes a silence through you all, 

And giveth His beloved sleep. 

His dews drop mutely on the hill, 
His cloud above it saileth still, 

Though on its slopes men sow and reap : 
More softly than the dew is shed, 
Or cloud is floated overhead, 

He giveth His beloved sleep. 

Words by Elisabeth Barrett Browning. Music written for this 
occasion by B. J. Lang. Sung by W. J. Winch. 




INTERIOR OF KING'S CHAPEL. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 

BY REV. CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT, D.D. 

TN the year 1825 Macaulay published the first of those 
A essays which were to make his name famous, and which 
were to effect a revolution in the art of review-writing for the 
English-speaking world. The subject of this essay was John 
Milton. In its opening pages Macaulay maintained that as 
civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. The 
language of civilization, he tells us, is unfitted for the poet's 
use. "The vocabulary of an enlightened society is philo- 
sophical ; that of a half-civilized people is poetical." The 
change which civilization produces in men's minds is no less 
unfavorable to poetry than the change which it works in lan- 
guage. The mind of the civilized man is analytic ; poetry 
demands the constructive power of the imagination. Poetry 
needs also a half-faith in the imagination, such as the child 
has in the story of " Red Riding-Hood." Poetry produces an 
illusion for the eye of the mind such as a magic lantern pro- 
duces for the eye of the body. Poetry, like the magic lan- 
tern, needs darkness ; and in these later days science has 
flooded the world with light. 



22 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

There is much plausibility in this reasoning of the young 
Macaulay, and its plausibility has grown stronger in the two 
generations since he wrote. We now almost smile at the 
notion that sixty or seventy years ago the world could have 
been thought of as penetrated by the light of Science. 
Since then knowledge has moved on with rapid stride, until 
now we may indeed feel that there is nothing which her 
power does not claim. Then life was like a free stream that 
flows at its own glad will ; it was like a fountain leaping to 
meet its source : now the formulae of science have taken 
life itself into their bondage. 

Different indeed is the world of to-day from that earlier 
world, in which, according to Macaulay, poetry had its proper 
place. Then there was everywhere the presence of sponta- 
neous life ; now there is everywhere the presence of lifeless 
forces. The Vedic hymns sing of Indra, the god who reveals 
his power in the lightning. The lightning is the spear that 
he hurls at the demons of the clouds, who are holding back 
from the thirsty earth the water that it needs. I confess it 
was with a certain shock that in the Hindu philosophy — 
later than the Vedic hymns, though still very ancient — I 
came upon the statement that the lightning is the effect of 
the wind beating upon the clouds. The idea would seem to 
be, that as fire is produced by rubbing two sticks together, so 
the heavenly fire is produced by the friction of the wind and 



Memorial Address. 23 

the cloud. Yes ; science, such as it was, had come to an- 
cient India ; and the strong and jovial, the kind and terrible 
Indra had fled before it. We can half sympathize with the 
Greeks, who turned their wrath upon Anaxagoras because 
he said that the sun was no living god, but a mass of fiery 
stone. No wonder it seemed to them blasphemy. They 
rightly felt that this might prove but the beginning of a 
revolution more terrible than that which placed Jupiter on 
the throne of Saturn. This might tear Jupiter from his seat, 
and put no other god in his place. The thought of Anax- 
agoras is now what we teach to our children in the schools. 
He would be hooted as a madman who should find in the 
sun any more divinity than this. Thus it is that Schiller 
speaks of "Die entgotterte Welt" — the world deflowered of 
its divinity. 

Another element has united with this to take the poetry 
out of life. I mean that of interest in merely material ad- 
vancement. There is, as the moralist grows never weary of 
telling us, a hot pursuit of wealth or of social advancement. 
Our young men can hardly wait for the time of preparation 
to be accomplished before they plunge into the vortex of 
active business life ; or if they have not this impatience, the 
world is tempted to think that the time spent in the higher 
culture, in the quiet contemplation of the fair humanities, 
should be reduced to as small a space as possible. 



24 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

These influences have had, to a large extent, their natural 
influence. On the whole, the age tends to become prosaic. 
Matthew Arnold professed to find our American life uninter- 
esting. We took the criticism in ill part, but did not help 
the matter by loudly insisting that we are interesting. There 
was a truth in what Matthew Arnold said. The truth of his 
accusation is in the fact that we are modern. In the Old 
World the modern life is enframed by the remains of an 
earlier age ; with us it stands alone. But even the regions 
most hallowed by the poetry of an earlier life our modern 
world tends to reduce to its own commonplaceness. A friend 
recently in Rome reported that it reminded him of nothing so 
much as of one of the newest and rawest of Western cities. 
An article in a late number of " The Nineteenth Century " 
draws a vivid picture of the change which the Eternal City 
has undergone. We are made to see streets lined with lofty 
buildings presenting all the tastelessness which the modern 
world can offer, and in their youthful prime tottering with a 
decrepitude of which their predecessors showed no sign in 
their venerable age. Even in Nuremberg the commonplace 
structures of the present age are more and more crowding 
out the old, and the quaint streets are being by slow degrees 
shorn of their beauty ; so that we are tempted to fear that 
the time will shortly come when one who would see the real 
Nuremberg must seek it in the pages of his Longfellow. 



Memorial Address. 25 

We can hardly help shrinking with a certain dread as we 
see the great hand of this tasteless modern life stretched out 
to crush in its remorseless grasp the airy and delicate beauty 
of Japan. 

I do not forget the real glories of our generation, — the 
improvement in all the appliances for comfort and luxury ; 
the magnificent triumphs of science ; the yet nobler triumphs 
of a large philanthropy ; and, nobler even than these tri- 
umphs, the great sympathy for the suffering which seeks, as 
yet so vainly, for some solution of the difficult problems of 
human life. We should be blind not to see all this, and 
heartless not to rejoice in it ; but we should be blind also if 
we did not see, and heartless also if we did not regret, the 
bare and prosaic aspect of so much of the modern world. In 
the face of this are we not forced to grant that the young 
Macaulay was right, and that a high degree of civilization 
must repress and finally crush out the spirit of poetry ? 

There are, however, two things which this reasoning leaves 
out of the account. One is the heart of the world itself, and 
the other is the heart of man. So far as the first of these is 
concerned, it forgets that our scientific discoveries are but 
superficial. They have to do only with the phenomenal 
world, with the world of finite successions and external 
relations. The deep heart and mystery of things they do not 
touch. Our science does little more than name the forces 



26 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

that are active in the world. We talk of gravitation ; but 
who will tell us what gravitation is ? It is as if one were to 
learn the names of the constellations, and should think that 
thereby he had exhausted the mystery of the heavens. And 
behind these forces, working in and through them, is that 
from which they derive their power. That, science can never 
measure or explore. It is in vain that our modern philosophy 
sets up upon the borders of this unexplored region of mystery 
its sign, " No trespassing allowed." The faith, the imagina- 
tion, the fancy of men will not heed the warning, and will 
make it their hunting-ground or their playground, as they 
have done from the beginning. 

As the mystery of the world will not suffer itself to be 
bound by such formulas, so the soul of man is by its very 
nature free. Human passions and human longings, the joys, 
the dreads, the aspirations of the heart remain. The more 
the minds of men are confined within the limits of conven- 
tionalism, and oppressed by the details of science and by ma- 
terial interests, the more will the stronger spirits rebel against 
the imprisonment. The very accumulation of scientific 
knowledge which we feared would stifle their life contributes 
to their life. It is as if one should seek to stifle flames by piling 
brushwood upon them. At first the flame is lost ; then there 
presses out here and there the smoke of discontent, until at 
last the fire bursts forth, and in wild joy consumes that 
beneath which it was buried. 



Memorial Address. 27 

In fact, at the time Macaulay wrote the essay of which I 
have spoken, the " Faust " of Goethe had been published 
seventeen years, Wordsworth was already fifty-five years 
old, and — what Macaulay could not have dreamed of — two 
English boys were busied with their work and their play, one 
thirteen years and the other sixteen years of age, who were 
to manifest the power of a lofty poetry in a civilization more 
complex, and in the face of a science more bold and all- 
embracing, than anything which Macaulay had imagined. 
They were to find their very inspiration in the thought and 
in the life of this age, in which the dry light of science illu- 
minates the world. These boys were Robert Browning and 
Alfred Tennyson. Indeed, it was in the very year when 
Macaulay wrote, that the opening blossom of the genius of 
the boy Browning was touched by the fertilizing pollen from 
the open flower of Shelley's poetry. 

I will not name other singers in England and America who 
have with the light of poetry glorified an age which is in so 
many respects prosaic, and made it worthy to be reckoned 
with the periods most marked in English literature. It is a 
happiness not to be easily exaggerated, that we have enjoyed 
the genius of two poets so strong, so earnest, so magnificent 
in their creations, and so unlike as Tennyson and Browning. 
The genius of the one has complemented that of the other. 
It is idle to seek to exalt one at the expense of the other. 



28 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

Some of us, by the natural bent of our spirits, may find more 
enjoyment in the one, and others in the other. Let us be 
thankful for the good which may thus come to us, but not 
seek to make our special taste the measure of their genius. 
Who shall say which is more beautiful, the castle-crowned 
hills through which the Rhine flows in its lower course, or 
the jagged and precipitous mountains through which its 
upper waters have cut their way? Who shall adjudge the 
prize of musical effect between the artistic completeness of 
the violin and the deep or lofty music that the organ utters ? 
One may prefer the violin, another may like the organ best. 
Let each take gladly whatever is thus granted him. Happy 
is he who can enjoy in full measure the beauty of them 
both. 

The figures that I have used I think may well express the 
difference between Tennyson and Browning. In the one we 
have the most perfect and delicate finish of art ; in the other 
we have more of the wild strength of Nature. Tennyson's 
verse is so clear that we sometimes fail to realize the depths 
over which we are borne so quietly ; the thought of Brown- 
ing is so stimulating that we sometimes almost forget the 
beauty of his verse. In Tennyson we have the smoothness 
of vowels and liquids ; in Browning we have the strength of 
the harsher consonants. The measure of each is the best 
expression for the spirit of his song. Change the "In 



Memorial Address. 29 

Memoriam " and the " Idyls of the King " into the speech of 
Browning, and how would they be transformed ! Sing the 
" Paracelsus " and the " Flight of the Duchess " in the music 
of Tennyson, and how much should we miss ! 

I have thus united the names of Browning and Tennyson, 
as we have been wont to do. Slowly we must learn to dis- 
entangle the names that have been so long linked together in 
our thoughts. The younger has been called the first to take 
his place in the sublime ranks of the poets of the past. The 
separation is, however, but for a time. Posterity shall re-link 
their names. Their genius, like some fair double star, shall 
shed its light upon the generations that are to follow, while it 
shall keep fresh the memory of our own. 

Most of us have known Robert Browning only as a poet ; 
but through his poetry we have felt something of the power 
and the fascination of his personality. In paying our tribute 
to his memory to-day, let us look at him as we have been 
wont to do. Let us consider him as a poet. Let us look at 
some of the elements that add beauty and strength to his 
song, and see afresh how these reveal something of the 
nature and spirit of the man. Doing this, we may learn also 
how what was best and most charming in him as a man 
united to fit him for his chosen work. 

We hardly need the representations of the poet which his 
friends have given us, or the pictured form, to realize the 



3° Memorial to Robert Browning. 

robust health in which he rejoiced. We read it in every page 
that he has written. I doubt if one could find on them a line 
or a thought that could be called morbid. The cheerful op- 
timism that shines through his works bears the mark of being 
on the one side the product of his thought, on the other the 
result of a healt<hy nature. This robustness shows itself in 
his style. Critics have complained that his verse is some- 
times harsh ; but strength as well as sweetness has a charm. 
His lines rarely fail to have a swing and a music of their 
own, — a music, too, which is for the most part the fitting 
garment of the thought that reveals itself through them. It 
is a rare delight to see such strength blossom into beauty. 
His English nature and his life in Italy, with the love he had 
for it, united to produce a rare fruitage. He had a power of 
intellect such as we would look for in a philosopher, united 
with a power of imagination such as few poets possess. 

It has become a commonplace to say that Browning's 
poetry is obscure. The " Sordello " indeed demands a study 
which it amply repays. So far as his other writings are con- 
cerned, it is rare that I find anything which demands more 
than a reasonable co-working of the reader with the poet. 
This is especially true of the works of his best period, ending 
with " The Ring and the Book." 

I do not deny that Browning sometimes fails to reach the 
complete mastery of form ; but I conceive that the obscurity 



Memorial Address. 31 

which so many find results largely from the strength and 
impetuosity of his nature, and from the vividness of his 
imagination. 

Mr. Edmund Gosse, who has given us a delightful picture of 
the poet, describes his private conversation. " The Browning 
of his own study," he tells us, " was to the Browning of a 
dinner-party as a tiger is to a domestic cat. . . . His talk 
assumed the volume and the tumult of a cascade." Swinburne 
says of him that "he never thinks but at full speed." It is 
not strange that such impetuosity should sometimes crowd 
too much into a sentence for the easiest apprehension. This 
is a small price to pay for the life which this eagerness. of 
utterance could not fail to introduce into his work. I con- 
ceive, however, that the obscurity, such as it is, comes no less 
from the vividness of his imagination. The scene which he 
would describe stood with such absolute distinctness before 
him that perhaps he did not always realize quite sufficiently 
the difference between his vision and that of the reader. He 
would thus bring out the salient points of the picture with- 
out always giving enough of the commonplace background 
and detail to make the reading quite easy to all. It is rare. 
however, that enough is not given, if only the reader will 
consent to let his imagination work with that of the poet. 
On the other hand, it is just this making prominent ot 
what is most characteristic, and the omission of what is 



32 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

commonplace, that is one great element of strength in style. 
Thus that which to many is a source of obscurity is to others 
the source of the keenest delight. I have compared the 
genius of Browning to the mountain region through which 
the upper Rhine flows. Many a via mala does the unac- 
customed reader find in his works ; but the difficult heights 
and the chasms that affright the hasty tourist give a joy to 
the climber who is at home among them and finds there a 
beauty such as the lowlands could hardly offer. Obscurity 
that comes from slovenliness cannot be too strongly blamed ; 
but obscurity that springs from strength of thought, vivid- 
ness of imagination, and force of style is something very 
different. 

Many assume that it is a condemnation of a poet in ad- 
vance to admit that a strain of attention must sometimes go 
to the reading of him. Why this should be, I do not know. 
A like method of judgment does not prevail in regard to 
music. It is thought no fault in a musical composer if the 
attention must be so stretched in listening to an unfamiliar 
symphony as to be followed by a certain weariness. 

It is almost pathetic to see the pains which Browning took 
to make himself clear. There are the headings which he 
added to the pages of the " Sordello" to tell what it was all 
about. They remind one of the guide-boards which of late 
have been scattered freely over the higher Alps, that the un- 



Memorial Address. 33 

wonted traveller might find his way, — somewhat to the dis- 
gust of the climbers who like to use their heads as well as 
their bodies in the ascent. Yet more pathetic is the change 
in the title of that charming series of poems in the " Drama- 
tis Personae" which was at first entitled "James Lee." In 
later editions the title has been prosaically changed to 
"James Lee's Wife," — probably to satisfy the needs of 
those who could not distinguish between a treble and a 
bass voice, or else perhaps of those who refused their sym- 
pathy to the unhappy pair until they had seen their marriage 
certificate. 

The imagination of Browning was perceptive as well as 
creative. What he shows us is never distorted ; it is real. 
It has, however, a beauty that we had never seen before, but 
which we see now ; for when his imagination adds a touch of 
life to the scene, it does it without marring its grand truth. 
Who else could have given us a picture like this ? 

" Oh, good, gigantic smile o' the brown earth 
This autumn morning ! How he sets his bones 
To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet 
For the ripple to run over in its mirth, 
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones 
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet." 

Or if you wish one drawn with a more delicate touch, look at 
this, from the same group of poems, — 

3 



34 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

" On the rock, they scorch 

Like a drop of fire 
From a brandished torch, 

Fell two red fans of a butterfly. 
No turf, no rock ; in their ugly stead 
See wonderful blue and red." 

In his last volume he speaks of the time when he first 
landed at Asolo, and 

" Natural objects seemed to stand 
Palpably fire clothed." 

The lambent flame has gone ; but he finds compensation 
in the fact that he now sees Nature in its sharp outline, — 
everything as it is. This was a consoling thought ; but for 
myself I doubt if the fiery glory was not the truer revelation 
of that from the heart of which it sprang. 

Mr. Edmund Gosse, to whose charming account of Brown- 
ing I have already referred, describes a conversation with the 
poet in a garden. He states that with all the life of birds 
and insects about them, Browning did not make an allusion 
to any of these natural facts. From this he draws the infer- 
ence that " although on occasion he could be so accurate an 
observer of Nature, it was not instinctive with him to ob- 
serve." The conclusion, I think, is not justified. What the 
incident did illustrate was the intensity of the poet's nature, 
he would interest himself in one thing at a time; and yet 



Memorial Address. 35 

more, perhaps, it shows that however much he loved Nature, 
he loved man better. 

With him hardly more than with the Greek poets does 
Nature figure except as the background and accompaniment 
of human life. All life interested him. The strength of his 
imagination showed itself in the revelation that it made to 
him of human hearts and the power that it gave him to pre- 
sent to us in visible form, and with the charm that genius 
alone can give, the living souls of men. It is marvellous 
how many and what different types of men and women are 
thus presented. Here his imagination and his love of his 
kind worked harmoniously together. In all these characters 
no one is slurred or blurred. Each stands out in absolute 
distinctness and reality. Critics have objected that so far as 
the more ignorant and lowly characters which he presents are 
concerned, it is not they who speak, but Browning who 
speaks through them. In other words, they talk like poets. 
It is true that they all are touched with the genius of 
Browning, but it is also true that it is their real inner 
life that speaks. The poem is none the less a revelation of 
them, even if it might sometimes have been a revelation to 
them. And what a power is this ! What power of genius, 
to create this world of living personalities, and to bid them 
stand forth, though in so many cases without story or group- 
ing, in all the charm of artistic completeness ! We admire 



36 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

the pathetic beauty of Guido's Beatrice Cenci, solitary in her 
grief. We wonder at the inspiration that could create the 
Apollo of the Belvidere, even though we do not see the 
monster at which his shaft is levelled. It is a genius like 
this by which Robert Browning placed before us living men 
and women, each uttering the secret of his life. The 
range of his characters was less only than that of the 
great world in which the genius of Shakspeare loved to 
disport itself. 

Browning treats these living creations of his with so much 
delicacy, — we might say with so much honor, — not infring- 
ing upon their rights, and letting each state his own case so 
fairly, that some have feared that an immoral influence might 
come from his work. Amid the sophistries and the inverted 
ideals of one and another, how easily might the impres- 
sible reader become bewildered and misled ! Indeed, it might 
not be easy to say why this should not happen. It might 
not be easy to say why it is that there comes a moral inspira- 
tion from this medley of voices. Who can say how we know 
that Shakspeare loves Cordelia rather than her sisters ? How 
do we know even that suffering innocence is more dear to the 
Creator of the world than triumphant vice? Perhaps in 
Browning's world the effect comes from this very fairness of 
treatment of which I have spoken. The worldly soul, for 
instance, is suffered to come forth into the light and display 



Memorial Address. 2>7 

itself precisely as it is. In this pitiless exposure of itself, 
and of the sophistries with which it clothes itself, is found 
its condemnation ; while the beauty of the loving and aspir- 
ing soul is its reward. Thus while Browning rejoiced in the 
intensity of life, even if the life were not of the highest, we 
never feel the lack of a moral atmosphere. Perhaps the story 
of " The Statue and the Bust " has been most often referred 
to in this connection. In this the actors are blamed because 
their life was wasted in vain longings for forbidden joys. 
The notion that it is better to live out one's life, right or 
wrong, and thus get some good out of it, even though this 
good be not the highest, has seemed to some to be an en- 
couragement to sin. But what shall we say of the cry of 
the prophet, " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. If 
the Lord be God, serve him ; if Baal, serve him " ? Has the 
world ever found impiety in this ? If men had to decide 
outright once for all, and then hold to their decision, would 
not they oftener be aroused to a sense of the true life? 
Or, at worst, if one loses heaven by hankering after for- 
bidden fruit, why should he lose earth also because he has 
not courage to pluck it ? 

Not only did Browning have- a love of human nature, which 
showed itself in the creations of which I have spoken, he 
was interested in life itself. He had his philosophy of 
life. Perhaps one element of this philosophy was the 



38 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

sense of the beauty of life in and for itself. It had, how- 
ever, certain elements more akin to what we ordinarily call 
philosophy. 

The word "philosophy " suggests the criticism of Brown- 
ing's poems which perhaps is the one most often urged. 
Some have considered him rather a philosopher than a poet ; 
and for one who stands as a poet there could be no worse 
condemnation. Perhaps the students of Browning have been 
somewhat at fault in this matter. They may have sought 
too diligently for the meaning of his verse. Perhaps they 
have sometimes found meanings of which the poet had not 
dreamed. Even when they have really reached his thought, 
that and the metrical form, separated in the analysis, may 
have sometimes remained apart ; and the unity, once broken, 
• has not been restored. 

Browning is sometimes spoken of as one who reasons in 
verse, as if that were to deny the claim that he is a real poet. 
There are, however, two different kinds of reasoning. One 
is that of the intellect, which moves by the rules of logic. 
This, taken by itself, even if it be put into metrical form, is 
no more poetry than the rhymes by means of which children 
remember the days of the month. The other is the reason- 
ing of the heart, aided by the imagination. This may furnish 
the material of the truest poetry. As an example of this, 
consider the often-quoted lines of Browning, — 



Memorial Address. 39 

"For the loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God." 

This is no logical proof of the existence of God. It is simply 
the voice of the heart rejoicing in what is divine, and sure that 
what is the best must be the truest. Much of the so-called 
reasoning of Browning is of this kind. It is full of passion, 
and is winged by the imagination. Sometimes the reasoning 
.serves simply to reveal the nature of the person into whose 
mouth it is put. It is not the reasoning that is the chief 
thing, but the character that is made visible by it. In 
Bishop Blougram's defence, for instance, we have presented 
what I have called an inverted ideal of life. By what power 
of imagination is this ideal embodied, and how does each 
new step in the reasoning make a new revelation of the 
man who utters it ! 

Let us ask briefly what is the philosophy of life which is 
embodied in those poems of Browning that can be said to be 
pervaded by a philosophy. Only in this way can we know 
whether it may furnish material to be fused by the fire of 
poetry. 

The philosophy of Browning, if it may be so called, con- 
sists in the sense of a discord in life, and in faith in an ideal 
in which this discord shall be solved. In the "Paracelsus" — 
the earliest poem which he afterward cared to acknowledge — 
the key is struck with which many of his other poems are in 



4-0 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

accord. In the history of the world, the earliest form of art 
is the symbolic. I have sometimes thought that the lives of 
the grander poets tended to repeat the forms through which 
the art of the world has passed. The "Paracelsus" presents 
this central thought of Browning in a lofty symbolism. It 
perhaps more truly than any other modern poem can be 
called sublime. Paracelsus and Aprile are each the half of a 
divided man. The one would know only, the other would 
love only ; and thus each fails for the lack of what, the other 
has. A somewhat similar contrast is marked in most of his 
other tragedies. Some would deny to these the right to be 
called dramas, because there is so little action. Certainly 
they are not dramas for the stage ; but to the reader they 
lack nothing of dramatic power. There are tragedies which 
are wrought out in the spirit, that have an interest and a 
significance that no conflict of force with force in the outer 
world can equal. In these and many of his other poems 
there is the contrast of the heart that would trust its own 
instincts, and an intellect that would trust to indirectness and 
cunning. In this and in other ways we are made to feel the 
antagonism of these elements of our nature in their separa- 
tion, and to realize the ideal beauty of a life in which they 
should be united in a glad harmony. 

Corresponding with this contrast in the inner life there is 
a discord in the larger world. There is power, and there is 



Memorial Address. 41 

love. The two seem opposed to each other. This is the 
great discord of the world. The head and the heart, power 
and love, — how shall they be reconciled ? Only by a faith 
that shall see love manifesting itself in the power; only in a 
life ideally perfect, in which the head and heart are in accord. 
This ideal shows itself as it stands out against the back- 
ground which religion offers. The religion of Browning is 
as simple, as natural, and as robust as his physical life. 
There is no cant, no change of tone, when he speaks of 
spiritual things. Partly from this natural voice in which the 
word is uttered, the name of God has a power on his lips 
that it has rarely had on another's. Immortality is the crown 
of life. Thus he looks serenely on the struggles that make 
so large a part of the experience of the world. Not what a 
man is, but what he aspires to be, makes up his true being. 

In these aspects of his poems we see how he is at once the 
child and the master of his age. When did the intellect and 
the heart find themselves so discordant as to-day ? When 
did the power of the world seem to so many to leave no place 
for love ? In his religion he showed that he had learned the 
lesson of his age, had passed through its conflicts, and had 
reached the peace which could only be gained through such 
strife. In the epilogue to the " Dramatis Personae " are pic- 
tured the three great stages in the religious life of men. 
First, there is the pomp of the old worship, — 



42 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

" When the singers lift up their voice, 

And the trumpets made endeavor, 
Sounding, ' In God rejoice ! ' 
Saying, ' In Him rejoice 

Whose mercy endureth forever ! ' 
Then the temple filled with a cloud, 

Even the house of the Lord ; 
Porch bent and pillar bowed ; 

For the presence of the Lord, 
In the glory of his cloud, 

Had filled the house of the Lord." 

Then follows the voice of the scepticism of the present day, 
singing of the face that had once looked down from the 
heavens, but which had vanished into the night. At last 
Browning himself speaks, saying, — 

" Friends, I have seen through your eyes : now use mine ! " 

and ending, — • * 

" Why, where 's the need of temple, when the walls 
O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls 
From Levites' choir, priests' cries, and trumpet calls? 
That one face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
Or decomposes but to recompose, 
Become my universe, that feels and knows ! " 

Such is all that I can find in the poems of Browning which 
can be called his philosophy. It is the joy in life for its own 



Memorial Address. 43 

sake. It is the recognition of one of the harshest of the 
discords that jar upon the harmony of life. It is the vision 
of an ideal life, in which this discord should be solved. It is 
the knowledge that the ideal after which one strives repre- 
sents a life more than the pitiful half-attainment. It is the 
perception of an infinite spiritual background, against which 
his noblest characters loom sublime, and from which the 
slightest things gain clearness and significance. Is not all 
this the very stuff out of which poetry should be wrought ? 
Does it need more than the master's touch to put on of itself 
the poetic form ? 

This must not be taken too seriously. He was not always, 
not often, dealing with the problems and the higher aspects 
of life. The summit of the mountain of his genius pierces 
the sky; but the green trees clothe its sides, and the flowers 
laugh upon its lower slopes and upon the plains that stretch 
about its base. 

While I have been speaking of the poetry of Browning, I 
have been trying to make more real to you and to myself the 
thought of that personality which the poems manifest, — that 
strong, eager nature; that joy in the outer world and in life ; 
that imagination which glorified the world ; that faith which 
soared above it. Do not these unite to reveal the presence 
of a noble manhood ? It is not merely gratitude for the 
works of his genius that brings us together to-day, though 



44 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

these well might justify the tribute that we offer. It is the 
companionship that we have found in the master who has 
come to seem to us as a friend ; it is the sense of the loss that 
has come to our own hearts; for though we shall rejoice still 
in the magnificence of the genius, we shall feel no longer 
the presence of that near human personality : it is this 
chiefly which has caused, and which justifies, this solemn 
commemoration. 

The few hints that have come to us from those who knew 
him well confirm this revelation from his works. He was 
sweet and gentle as he was strong, generous as he was quick 
and impetuous, beloved by his friends as he was honored by 
the world. In meeting a new acquaintance, one tells us, he 
seemed more anxious to please than to be pleased. 

As his personality was a splendid example of the possi- 
bilities of human nature, so would his history seem to be a 
beautiful illustration of the possibilities of human life. The 
qualities which have brought joy to us in his works, the 
strength, the buoyancy, the delight in Nature and in man, the 
glow of imagination, the cheerful faith, — all these would 
bring happiness to him also. He was free from the harassing 
cares that beset so many. In his career as an artist there 
were obstacles enough to stimulate the strength of his pur- 
pose and to show the power of his manhood ; there was 
recognition enough to more than satisfy his longing for sym- 



Memorial Address. 45 

pathy and fame. He had the joy of health and of a glad 
activity to the very last. His latest book, published on the 
day of his death, not only manifests the spiritual power that 
charmed us in his earlier works ; it has more touches of his 
earlier genius than are found in most of his later poems. 

How can I speak of that marriage which has not its parallel 
upon the earth ? When did two such regal souls unite in 
such an intimate relation ? When did poet have offered to 
him from one whom he loved, songs glorified by such genius 
as shines through the sonnets which were modestly inscribed 
as translated from the Portuguese ? 

In our thought of Browning and his work to-day, by the 
side of the " Rabbi Ben Ezra," in which he sang as few have 
done the worth of life, we love to place the " Saul," in which 
he sang as no one else has done, and as few have had equal 
right to do, the joy of living. 

In the solemn obsequies in Westminster Abbey, as amidst 
the throng of the noblest of England's living sons the body 
of Browning was placed among the noblest of her dead, 
Mrs. Browning's sacred verse was sung, — 

" He giveth His beloved sleep." 

He had once sung to her, — 

" Here where the heart rests let the brain rest also." 



46 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

It was fitting that his death should receive the benediction of 
the love that had blessed his life. 

Thus do we strive, in such poor fashion as we may, to utter 
to this noble soul our gratitude and our God-speed, and in the 
words which he has put into our lips, the words which stand 
on the last page of his latest book, cry after him, as he 
vanishes into the unseen, " Strive and thrive ! " cry, — 

" Speed, fight on, fare ever 
There as here ! " 



Song from Robert Browning's "Paracelsus." 47 



SONG. 

I GO to prove my soul ! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, 
I ask not : but, unless God send his hail, 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet, or stifling snow, 
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : 
He guides me and the bird. In his good time ! 

From Robert Browning's "Paracelsus." Music by Ethel 
Harradan. Sung by W. J. Winch. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

BY C. P. CRANCH. 

I AM very glad to respond to your invitation to this memo- 
rial service in honor of the distinguished poet whose 
recent death is lamented by all who have known his works, 
and especially by some of us who had known him personally 
in his younger or in his later days. From all we knew of him, 
it seemed as if his immense vitality and productive power 
might have continued untouched for many years longer ; 
and it is not easy to think of him as one of the forever 
silent voices among us. 

My first acquaintance with Browning's works dates back 
to over forty-five years ago, when I was one of a compara- 
tively small circle of the readers and admirers of the first of 
his books known in America. I well remember with what 
fresh delight and enthusiasm we read them. 

It was therefore a rare experience when a few years later 
I met him in Florence in the winter of 1849. I recall his 
bright, alert, sunny, cordial presence as he sat in my studio, 
or as I saw him in his rooms at the Casa Guidi — those 



Address by C. P. Cranch. 49 

rooms then lit up as by a double star — with Mrs. Browning 
at his side. My wife and I were introduced to them by our 
friend Margaret Fuller ; and I think it was through her, 
and about the same time, that our friend William Story was 
introduced to them. The natural feeling of remoteness in 
our first admission to the society of two such distinguished 
poets was soon dissipated by their frank and genial hospi- 
tality. We saw them often, and it is needless to say that 
the privilege of this acquaintance gave added charms to our 
residence that winter in Florence. 

I met Browning again in London in 1855 — also in Paris — 
and in 1859 in Rome. But he was then moving much in 
aristocratic society, and we saw less both of him and his wife. 

At the time I first knew him he was thirty-seven years old. 
He wore no beard or moustache, and his hair was nearly 
black. This was his appearance the last time I saw him. 
The later photographs of him, with gray hair and full 
gray beard, do not help me in the least to a recollection of 
his face. 

His manners were extremely cordial and friendly. When 
animated in conversation, he had a way of getting up and 
standing, or walking up and down while still continuing to 
talk in a fluent vein. A subject that especially excited him 
at that time was that of mediums and spiritual manifestations. 
He was an utter unbeliever in these, while Mrs. Browning 

4 



50 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

was very credulous ; and they had many a friendly altercation 
on this theme. 

Of most of Browning's works since then I have been from 
time to time a reader, — greatly drawn to his best poems 
as among the most remarkable of our century. 

As time went on, and every few years brought from his 
pen something new, his readers perused these audacious 
and phenomenal works with moods of mixed and conflict- 
ing criticism. The originality, the strength, the variety, the 
scholarship, the powerful dramatization of the interior life, 
the subtile thought, the blood-warm vitality, the spiritual 
aspiration, were all there. But here too were the capri- 
cious and eccentric diction, — the rhymes that were merely 
ingenious and odd, but running unpleasantly and irrelevantly 
criss-cross, as it were, to the natural movement of the 
thought. Here were promising hints at intimate thoughts 
and feelings shrouded in misty phrases ; here were poems 
that seemed like games of chess, almost mathematical prob- 
lems. And the question rose, How much of this is poetry, 
whether as substance or form ? Then, as to the thought 
itself, apart from any poetic expression, the critics said: 
" Here are huge masses of rock full of pure gold ; but then, 
think of the trouble of extracting it ! Here are skeins 
to unravel ; here are hard nuts to crack, — problems to 
solve," — till finally came the idea of associated labor, and 



Address by C. P. Cranch. 5 1 

societies must be formed to discuss and lay open his mys- 
teries. The critics naturally said, "We looked for a new 
poet, who should continue the fresh strains of his early 
day ; and lo ! here we have the most abstruse and puzzling 
of Delphic oracles, where wilful caprice and obscurity are 
found clouding the lustre of a noble genius, — and what a 
pity ! He could speak so to the poetic sense in the general 
heart if he only chose ! " 

But on an occasion like this, feeling as we must how 
shining a light has gone out from the literature of our cen- 
tury, and how unexpectedly, — for though no longer young, 
he gave no signs of intellectual decay, — the voice of criti- 
cism should be still before the solemn and tender associa- 
tions of his death. We would remember him only at his 
best, and avoid the critical spirit in which so many of his 
most earnest admirers regret that he was not always equal 
to the expectations he himself raised. 

For one, I like to remember Browning chiefly in his 
earlier, though here and there very distinctly in his later 
poems. But in summing up all he has written, what wealth 
of lofty thought and imagery, and superb delineation of 
character ! Has not his genius left a stamp of individual- 
ity that must endure with our literature ? 

There is this too to be said, that we make no fewer 
marked selections from his works, relatively to their bulk, 



52 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

than we do in our reading of any of the great poets. How 
much of Byron, of Shelley, of Wordsworth, lingers in our 
memory compared to the great mass of what they pub- 
lished ? And especially is this true when comparing their 
longer with their shorter poems. Perhaps no long and elab- 
orate work by any modern poet is ever equal to his shorter 
flights. 

I think there is always an element in the writings of 
every poet of genius that eludes the touch of intellectual 
vivisection. It is that which is the soul of poetry, — a 
mystery often felt more than comprehended, or identified 
by any cheap or conventional labels. 

In Browning we feel the presence of resources on which 
he almost disdains to draw. 

As a great dramatist and dramatic lyrist, as a profound 
spiritual seer, and as a master of original, vivid, and power- 
ful diction, he is noble and inspiring, and will always, in 
spite of his deficiencies of form, rank as one of the great 
poets of our time. 



Sonnet by C. P. Cranch. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 

Themes strong, verse blood-warm with the limbs and veins 

Of life at full flush ; yet as when one sees 

Some unknown Grecian youth Praxiteles 
Or Phidias raised from flesh on Attic plains 
Into perennial marble, the coarse stains 

Of corporal frailty cleansed by ministries 

Of art divine from all impurities, 
Till of crude fact the living soul remains, — 
So with the touch of genius wrought this seer 
Of passion and of truth, till heart and mind 
Share in the vigor of the fleshly frame. 
Though palpable to sense his forms appear, 
In the soul's life transfigured and refined 
The higher art that nature makes, they claim. 

C. P. Cranch. 



REMARK S. 

BY DANA ESTES, 

Chairman of the Executive Committee. 

IT was my great privilege to meet and become acquainted 
with Mr. Browning during my last visit to London, about 
eighteen months ago. I saw him in his home, and the princi- 
pal impressions left on my mind regarding him are, first, his 
intense vitality, which made him appear threescore rather 
than fourscore ; second, his great kindness and cordiality 
to me ; third, his pride in the genius of his son, whose 
paintings and sculptures adorned his house from one end 
to the other ; and fourth, his warm regard for his literary 
contemporaries. He naturally spoke to me more freely of 
my countrymen than of others ; and the great personal 
regard, as well as literary appreciation, which he expressed 
for our leading men of letters was, and will remain, a source 
of pride to me as an American. Among those for whom 
he expressed more than ordinary affection were Professor 
Lowell, whom we all delight to honor, and whom we 
expected here to-day to pay his tribute of respect to his 
friend ; William W. Story, our poet-sculptor ; Colonel Hig- 
ginson, who I am sure is with us in spirit ; and Professor 




KING'S CHAPEL. CHANCEL AND PULPIT, WITH MEMORIAL DECORATIONS. 



Tributes. 5 5 

Norton, who is prevented by an important engagement from 
being here, but who sends this letter of regret: — 

Shady Hill, Jan. 15, 1890. 

My dear Sir, — I thank you for your letter of yesterday. I 
should be glad if it were possible for me to take part in the com- 
memorative service on the 28th inst. ; but on that afternoon I am 
engaged to attend a meeting of the College faculty, for which busi- 
ness of importance, in which I am concerned, has been made a 
special assignment. 

There will be far better voices than mine to honor the memory of 
the dead poet. It is an occasion for the expression of the sense 
of public loss, and of that public gratitude the first expression of 
which was happily not delayed too long. 

I am very truly yours, C. E. Norton. 

Dana Estes, Esq., Chairman, etc. 

I have selected from scores of letters of regret received, 
a few others of especial interest. 

Hartford, Jan. 20, 1890. 
Dana Estes, Chairman, etc. 

Dear Sir, — I am sorry that engagements will probably prevent my 
attendance at the Browning memorial service. 

What a noble thing it is, though, that you thus honor a poet, — 
Only a poet, — and I should like to think it significant of a change in 
public ideas. 

Yours sincerely, Charles Dudley Warner. 



56 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

Dana Estes, Esq. YoNKERS ' N " Y " ^ 2I > l8 9°' 

Dear Sir, — I regret very much that I shall not be able to be 
present at the Browning memorial service at King's Chapel. I am 
very glad, however, that Boston will pay this deserved honor to the 
great poet. I gratefully recognize him as one of the great spiritual 
seers and teachers of the nineteenth century, through whose inspiring 
strains the hearts of our generation have been roused to more earnest 
life and aspiration, and filled with brighter hope and serenity. What 
Wagner has been to the music of this century, that has Robert 
Browning been to its poetic development. 
Cordially yours, 

James T. Bixby. 

West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y., Jan. 23, 1S90. 

My dear Sir, — I thank you sincerely for the honor of the invita- 
tion to the services in memory of Mr. Browning on the 28th of 
January, and I am very sorry that engagements not to be avoided 
compel me to decline it. 

It is my happiness to remember that I was among the earliest 
Americans who knew Mr. Browning in Europe, and I had the pleas- 
ure of giving him a copy of Margaret Fuller's review of his poetry, 
which she wrote for the " New York Tribune." It was the first im- 
portant tribute to his genius from this country, which welcomed him 
sooner, I think, and more warmly, than his native land. It is evi- 
dent that the spell of his power among us has but strengthened and 
widened with time, and that Miss Fuller's fine appreciation was only 
the first note of what has become an American chorus of delight and 
admiration. 



Tributes. 5 7 

I wish that I could hear the good words that will be spoken at 
your meeting; but I must console myself by hearty sympathy with 
the respect for the man and the reverence for the genius, which will 
be eloquently expressed. 

Very faithfully yours, 

George William Curtis. 



The tributes received are not alone from men of letters, 
but from professional and business men also, and among 
the latter is one from his Honor the Mayor. 



City of Boston Executive Department. 
To Dana Estes, Esq. 

My dear Sir, — I regret to say that other engagements will pre- 
vent me from attending the memorial service in honor of Robert 
Browning, on Tuesday next. As Browning belongs to the English- 
speaking world, it is right that this city, being the geographical cen- 
tre of the world's population that speaks English, should honor one 
of the greatest poets whose language is our mother-tongue. 

Respectfully, 

Thomas N. Hart, Mayor. 
Jan. 22, 1890. 

I have also a letter expressing the regrets of the editors 
of " Poet-Lore," a magazine devoted wholly to the litera- 
ture of the greatest dramatist of recent times and the 
greatest dramatist of all time, Browning and Shakspeare. 



58 Memorial to Robert Browning. 

Poet-Lore, 223 South Thirty-eighth Street, 

Philadelphia, Jan. 27, 1890. 

To the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Browning Society: 

Dear Sir, — We regret that we shall not be able to accept the 

kind invitations we have received to the Browning Memorial Service 

of January 28. We will join with you while here, however, as will 

the poet's lovers everywhere the world over, in honoring the man, 

whose most spiritual influence remains with us, with our co-operation, 

to work us good forever. 

Believe us sincerely, 

Charlotte Porter. 

Helen A. Clarke. 

Amesbury, Jan. 31, 1S90. 

Dear Mr. Estes, — I directed, I find, wrongly a note to you 
yesterday, exuressive of regret that, owing to illness, I was unable to 
attend the Browning Memorial Meeting, or to write a letter fitting the 
occasion. Yours truly, 

John G. Whittier. 



Poem by R. W. Gilder. 59 



Mr. Estes then read the following poem, composed for 
the occasion by Mr. R. W. Gilder: — 

THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER, 1889. 

On this day Browning died ? 
Say, rather : On the tide 
That throbs against those glorious palace walls ; 
That rises — pauses — falls, 

With melody, and myriad-tinted gleams ; 

On that enchanted tide, 
Half real, and half poured from lovely dreams, 
A Soul of Beauty — a white, rhythmic flame — 
Passed singing forth into the Eternal Beauty whence it came. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 



6o Memorial to Robert Browning. 



HYMN. 

Sung by the audience at the Westminster Abbey Service. 

O God, our help in ages past, 

Our hope for years to come, 
Our shelter from the stormy blast, 

And our eternal home. 

Before the hills in order stood, 

Or earth received her frame, 
From everlasting thou art God, 

To endless years the same. 

Time, like an ever-rolling stream, 

Bears all its sons away ; 
They fly forgotten, as a dream 

Dies at the opening day. 

O God, our help in ages past, 

Our hope for years to come, 
Be thou our guard, while troubles last, 

And our eternal home. 



Benediction. 6 1 



BENEDICTION. 

BY REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 

A /[AY the truth and love, the glory and greatness, of our 
A God be with us. May He speak, as He has ever 
spoken, with the voices of His prophets, which are His voices. 
May wisdom cry, and understanding lift up her voice ; and 
may people listen and learn. May mercy and peace from God 
our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be with us, and abide 
with us always. Amen. 



Committee of Arrangements. 



President. 
Col. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 

Uice^resitients. 
Dr. W. J. ROLFE. Mrs. E. S. FORMAN. 

Secretarw. 

Mrs. J. C. RAND. 

^Treasurer. 

Mrs. G. M. COBURN. 



lEpecutfbe ©"omntfttce. 

DANA ESTES, Chairman. 
Mrs. ALICE K. ROBERTSON. HOWARD M. TICKNOR. 

Mrs. S. G. DAVIS. Hon. ROBERT C. PITMAN. 



The music was under the direction of B. J. Lang, and the Songs 
were by W. J. Winch. 



USHERS. 



HOWARD M. TICKNOR. 
DANIEL C. ROBINSON. 
PHILIP SAVAGE. 
A. S. PARSONS. 
J. C. RAND. 



G. M. COBURN. 
FRED R. ESTES. 
CHARLES F. PAGE. 
FREDERIC MEAD. 
FRANCIS H. LITTLE. 



D. E. WHITE. 



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